Asha Javeed

Lead Ed­i­tor In­ves­ti­ga­tions

asha.javeed@guardian.co.tt

Guyana’s Pres­i­dent Mo­hamed Ir­faan Ali says the coun­try has in­sti­tut­ed con­tin­gency plan­ning to cater for all even­tu­al­i­ties as ten­sions sim­mer over bor­der dis­pute be­tween Guyana and Venezuela.

It comes a week be­fore Venezuela holds a ref­er­en­dum on De­cem­ber 3 to seek ap­proval to re­ject the Ar­bi­tral Award of 1899, which fixed the bound­ary be­tween British Guiana and Venezuela, to for­mal­ly an­nex the Es­se­qui­bo Re­gion by in­cor­po­rat­ing it in­to Venezuela as a new Venezue­lan state, to give Venezue­lan cit­i­zen­ship and na­tion­al iden­ti­ty cards to the Guyanese pop­u­la­tion, and to de­vel­op the ter­ri­to­ry as part of Venezuela.

The Es­se­qui­bo Re­gion com­pris­es more than two-thirds of the whole of Guyana it­self.

Guyana has ar­gued that all of these ac­tions are vi­o­la­tions of the most fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples of in­ter­na­tion­al law, en­shrined in the Unit­ed Na­tions and OAS char­ters.

“You will ap­pre­ci­ate that be­cause this plan­ning hinges on na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty con­sid­er­a­tions, I can­not re­veal the de­tails of our plans,” he told the Sun­day Guardian in an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view last week.

On the spe­cif­ic ques­tion of pos­si­ble mil­i­tary ac­tion, he ex­plained that he was go­ing around to re­gions of Guyana, bor­der­ing Venezuela, “to calm and re­as­sure the peo­ple there”.

“I have told them that my gov­ern­ment is do­ing every­thing with­in its means to en­sure their safe­ty. I have al­so told them that I do not be­lieve that Venezuela will act reck­less­ly. How­ev­er, I al­so said that de­spite this be­lief, Guyana will re­main vig­i­lant and will not be caught un­pre­pared,” he said.

Ali spent two days last week in com­mu­ni­ties along the Guyana-Venezuela bor­der in Re­gions One and Sev­en and held meet­ings in Mabaru­ma, Port Kai­tu­ma Barami­ta, Kaikan and Arau, to meet res­i­dents and al­lay con­cerns and even spent the night with the Guyana De­fence Force.

In a Face­book post yes­ter­day, Ali said that his Gov­ern­ment was fo­cused on a peace­ful and just res­o­lu­tion, but would not be “tak­ing any­thing for grant­ed” and has been putting mea­sures in place to en­sure the safe­ty of its cit­i­zens and bor­ders.

“I came here my­self to as­sure you that we are to­geth­er 100 per cent, we are on top of this, we are work­ing at every sin­gle lev­el, we have the full sup­port of our part­ners and in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty and you have noth­ing to fear—we are with you 100 per cent. We pre­fer to err on the side of cau­tion; that is why we are tak­ing every step, that is why we are putting every­thing in place ... we can­not take any­thing for grant­ed,” he said in his post.

In an in­ter­view post­ed on­line, he al­so said that Guyana was strength­en­ing its de­fence with the Unit­ed States on the mat­ter.

Last Thurs­day, Guyana’s Vice Pres­i­dent Bhar­rat Jagdeo told AFP news that two teams from the US De­part­ment of De­fence will vis­it Guyana this week.

“We’re in­ter­est­ed in main­tain­ing peace in our coun­try and in our bor­ders, but we’re go­ing to be work­ing with our al­lies to en­sure that we plan for all even­tu­al­i­ties,” Jagdeo had said.

“We were nev­er in­ter­est­ed in mil­i­tary bases, but we have to pro­tect our na­tion­al in­ter­est,” Jagdeo had said, adding that de­fence co-op­er­a­tion was be­ing pur­sued “with a num­ber of coun­tries”.

“All the op­tions avail­able for us to de­fend our coun­try will be pur­sued. Every op­tion,” he said.

On No­vem­ber 14 and 15, the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice in The Hague held hear­ings on Guyana’s Re­quest for Pro­vi­sion­al Mea­sures, by which Guyana sought an Or­der from the Court to pre­vent Venezuela from tak­ing any ac­tion to vi­o­late Guyana’s sov­er­eign­ty in the Es­se­qui­bo Re­gion.

Guyana sought the Court’s pro­tec­tion in re­sponse to Venezuela’s sched­ul­ing of a ref­er­en­dum that threat­ens grave, ir­repara­ble and in­cal­cu­la­ble harm to our coun­try.

“All of them threat­en Guyana’s sov­er­eign­ty, ter­ri­to­r­i­al in­tegri­ty and po­lit­i­cal in­de­pen­dence,” Ali had said in a state­ment at the time.

“But what Venezuela has planned for De­cem­ber 3 is no or­di­nary con­sul­ta­tion. What Venezuela seeks by way of this so-called ref­er­en­dum is a li­cence not on­ly to break the law but to crum­ble it to bits—a li­cence to vi­o­late and de­stroy Guyana’s fun­da­men­tal rights as a sov­er­eign state.”

No con­flict for T&T

Ali said he does not see a con­flict for T&T as ten­sions be­tween Guyana and Venezuela sim­mer.

While T&T and Guyana are a part of Cari­com, with Guyana as a point on en­sur­ing food se­cu­ri­ty for the re­gion, T&T has al­so been in ne­go­ti­a­tions with Venezuela to se­cure nat­ur­al gas from the Drag­on Field to en­sure this coun­try’s en­er­gy life­line.

“We do not see a con­flict­ed sit­u­a­tion, at all. Guyana is deeply en­cour­aged by the re­cent state­ment is­sued from Port-of-Spain. Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley stat­ed that ‘Guyana knows that it has the sup­port of Cari­com on this mat­ter and Venezuela knows that Cari­com sup­ports Guyana on this mat­ter,’” said Ali.

Last week, Row­ley said that he was con­fi­dent of a peace­ful res­o­lu­tion as T&T viewed Venezuela as its clos­est neigh­bour, with close work­ing re­la­tion­ships, and T&T was heav­i­ly in­vest­ed in Guyana as Cari­com’s cap­i­tal.

Dr Row­ley ad­mit­ted there were al­ways risks, in­clud­ing that of a “nu­clear”-style po­lit­i­cal chain re­ac­tion, but said Cari­com wished the re­gion to be a zone of peace. Row­ley did not want to see the re­la­tion­ship be­tween Venezuela and Guyana dam­aged.

Guyana’s oil dis­cov­er­ies have made it the world’s biggest re­serves of crude per capi­ta, while Venezuela sits on the largest proven re­serves over­all.

Ali said that en­er­gy com­pa­nies have not ex­pressed con­cerns about the ten­sions be­tween the ter­ri­to­ries but he ex­pects the ref­er­en­dum to be suc­cess­ful.

“We do not dis­pute the strong like­li­hood that all the pro­posed ques­tions in the ref­er­en­dum will be an­swered in the af­fir­ma­tive. We are pre­pared for such an out­come. Guyana has ar­gued its case be­fore the ICJ about our re­quest for Pro­vi­sion­al Mea­sures, and we are con­fi­dent that the court will de­ter­mine mea­sures favourable to us. How­ev­er, we are al­so mind­ful that the Bo­li­var­i­an Re­pub­lic of Venezuela has in­di­cat­ed to the court that re­gard­less of the de­ci­sion of the court, Venezuela will pro­ceed with the sched­uled ref­er­en­dum.

“Guyana has al­ways placed its trust in the rule of in­ter­na­tion­al law, in diplo­ma­cy as a first line of de­fence, in de­fence co-op­er­a­tion and the sol­i­dar­i­ty from the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty. But let me make it clear, we har­bour no in­ter­est or in­cli­na­tion to threat­en any state or any­one. We are a peace­ful na­tion and we are com­mit­ted to the peace­ful res­o­lu­tion of dis­putes in ac­cor­dance with the Char­ter of the Unit­ed Na­tions, and specif­i­cal­ly in re­la­tion to this is­sue, to ac­cept­ing the out­come of the ju­ridi­cal pro­ceed­ings be­fore the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice.

“More im­por­tant­ly, all of Guyana stands unit­ed in de­fend­ing our ter­ri­to­r­i­al in­tegri­ty and sov­er­eign­ty. The mem­bers of the par­lia­men­tary Op­po­si­tion have pledged their sup­port in the mat­ter. We wel­come this de­vel­op­ment. In­ter­nal­ly, there is an over­whelm­ing cho­rus of sup­port for the pro­tec­tion and preser­va­tion of our ter­ri­to­r­i­al in­tegri­ty. All Guyana stands as One Guyana on this is­sue,” he said.

He ex­plained that the ref­er­en­dum was an in­ten­tion by Venezuela to ob­tain an over­whelm­ing pop­u­lar man­date to re­ject the ju­ris­dic­tion of the Court; to pre-empt a fu­ture judg­ment of the Court and, in so do­ing, un­der­mine the au­thor­i­ty and ef­fec­tive­ness of the ICJ.

“We have al­so stat­ed that through the man­date ob­tained from this planned ref­er­en­dum, Venezuela pur­ports to an­nex and to in­cor­po­rate in­to its ter­ri­to­ry the en­tire Es­se­qui­bo re­gion, and to grant Venezue­lan cit­i­zen­ship to the pop­u­la­tion. Guyana’s ap­proach to the ICJ for Pro­vi­sion­al Mea­sures is not an at­tempt at in­ter­fer­ing in the sov­er­eign right of Venezuela to con­sult with its peo­ple on is­sues it con­sid­ers of na­tion­al im­por­tance. How­ev­er, we in­sist that such a ref­er­en­dum can­not im­pugn or vi­o­late, im­plic­it­ly or ex­plic­it­ly, the sov­er­eign­ty or ter­ri­to­r­i­al in­tegri­ty of Guyana,” he said.

In­ter­na­tion­al Sup­port

Ali not­ed that the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty stands in the cor­ner of Guyana. “From the time it be­came clear that Venezuela would hold the ref­er­en­dum, the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty is­sued an un­equiv­o­cal state­ment. In its state­ment, Cari­com said that two ques­tions in the ref­er­en­dum, if an­swered af­fir­ma­tive­ly, would au­tho­rise the an­nex­a­tion of ter­ri­to­ry be­long­ing to the Co­op­er­a­tive Re­pub­lic of Guyana. Cari­com em­pha­sised that in­ter­na­tion­al law strict­ly pro­hibits one state from uni­lat­er­al­ly seiz­ing or an­nex­ing the ter­ri­to­ry of an­oth­er state.

“The Com­mu­ni­ty al­so raised alarm about the lan­guage in the ap­proved ques­tions, which seeks af­fir­ma­tion and im­ple­men­ta­tion of Venezuela’s stance on the is­sue “by all means, ac­cord­ing to/with the law”. It said that the phrase “by all means” could po­ten­tial­ly in­clude the use of force or war.

“It went on to ex­press the opin­ion that the ref­er­en­dum by Venezuela holds no va­lid­i­ty in in­ter­na­tion­al law and could un­der­mine peace and se­cu­ri­ty in the re­gion. Cari­com re­it­er­at­ed its sup­port for the ju­di­cial process and en­cour­aged Venezuela to ful­ly en­gage in the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice to reach a peace­ful and eq­ui­table res­o­lu­tion in ac­cor­dance with in­ter­na­tion­al law,” he said.

“Guyana is pleased with the stance tak­en by the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty. The Gov­ern­ment of Guyana has nev­er been in doubt as to where the mem­ber states of Cari­com stand in re­la­tion to Guyana’s ter­ri­to­r­i­al in­tegri­ty and sov­er­eign­ty. Sev­er­al in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners have al­so ex­pressed their po­si­tions un­am­bigu­ous­ly,” he said.

“The Unit­ed States’ po­si­tion was un­der­scored by its Am­bas­sador to the Or­ga­ni­za­tion of Amer­i­can States (OAS), Fran­cis­co Mo­ra. He af­firmed the Amer­i­can Gov­ern­ment’s sup­port for Guyana’s sov­er­eign right to ex­ploit its nat­ur­al re­sources and re­ject­ed the at­tempt by Venezuela to set­tle the ter­ri­to­r­i­al dis­pute out­side of in­ter­na­tion­al law. He re­peat­ed the Unit­ed States’ re­spect for the 1899 Ar­bi­tral Tri­bunal Award and urged re­spect for the on­go­ing pro­ceed­ings at the ICJ.”